Monday, 19 March 2012

Berneray Mill

There are no written records regarding
a mill on Berneray, Harris that I know of; no millers are recorded in the
censuses from 1841 onwards, there is no place name indicating the site of a
mill, no identified archaeological evidence.

An aerial photograph of the area may
be seen online
where, if one follows the river near the middle of the image upstream from the
sea, the ‘Mill’ on the map appears to be located on the left bank just above the
ruins to be seen on its right bank and with which it may have been associated.

This raises several intriguing
questions:

When was the mill built? Is it
ancient or, perhaps, part of the developments introduced by Captain Macleod
after he bought the whole of Harris in 1779?

Why did the mill apparently cease to
be used during the first half of the 19thC? Had it been milling grain from
Pabbay and thus become redundant when that island, which had at one time been ‘the
granary of Harris’, wasCleared for a sheep farm in the 1840s?

How is it
that this significant place never gained the honour of being named nor of
otherwise being mentioned in writing? This might indicate that it was both relatively
‘modern’ and short-lived, thus supporting the idea of a link to Captain Macleod
whose efforts ceased with his death in 1790 and whose son, Alexander Hume Macleod, apparently
commissioned Bald’s map.

The only way
that the answers to these questions may be found is by a proper archaeological survey
of the site but meanwhile my conjecture is that it was a grain mill and that
the same boats that would later bring the people of Pabbay to pray in Berneray, following
the building of the Parliamentary Church in 1829, would have been bringing grain
to be milled in this now long-forgotten mill.